The Voynich Manuscript: A Research Compilation

[Ksihkehe]

I've been browsing through the manuscript and have a tentative theory of what the book is about.

I did too and I found the idea of Cathars from the debunked decode interesting. They have come up fairly recently in discussions ol' Clif High has been having.

   

As I mentioned in another post the images might provide clues that can help with the written parts and the people in the VM do look have a similar look with posture and features from Cathar art, if a bit less polished. I have no real background in the religious art of the time though and it may be ubiquitous across the western world. I think it would take a real art historian to spot the differences because it all looks sort of similar to me.

Almost everything known about the Cathars comes from confessions of “heretics” taken by Catholic clergy during the inquisition which followed the Albigensian Crusade. The belief structure can easily be traced back to Manichaeism which traveled via the Silk Road from the Byzantine Empire and the Middle East to Europe where it became entwined, under certain circumstances, with Christian belief and symbolism.

Cathar history

They practiced Gnosticism with elements drawn from various sects going back to Zoroastrianism. That fits the general sort of beliefs that most of the alchemist of that time we're leaning toward. It wouldn't be at all out of character for their herbalist beliefs to involve nature beings as part of the lore. That explains the language as well, which would be only accessible to others from the same "school".

As you know, this is exactly the sort of book we've expected to find attached to the lost book mentioned in The Vertical Plane, though we know the author leaned more toward gnostic Catholicism.

Getting to the bottom of the translation is out of my depth, but I do enjoy the mystery. The plants are not any that I recognize and I did a bit of searching for those before as I have a fair bit of knowledge on wild edibles and medicinal plants. They look sort of like other things, but it seems nobody has discovered real world species that match. That could lend further support for your ideas on what they were recording. The plant world is very large though, so who knows if they were regional plants that either haven't been widely documented or have become exceedingly rare or become extinct.

I lean toward plants that don't exist and the authors being in touch with entities of some kind, either via their religious practices or just as part of their traditional lore. The plant images themselves may even have codes hidden in their structure. Numerology, perhaps, or symbolism related to their beliefs.

As pointed out by FCD, vellum and the materials for writing were not exactly something everyone had laying around. A certain amount of wealth or the access to resources was required for them to even have it. It would be a really big expense to give to a crazy person to scribble on.